


Your Theory of Everything

by moonrise31



Series: once, twice, and again until it's over [19]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, magic or ot9, the answer is yes or yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrise31/pseuds/moonrise31
Summary: In which Sana meets Jihyo under enchanted circumstances -- and Jihyo, in turn, discovers the true meaning of a universe.(Alternatively, in which Momo loses a piece of herself, and her friends will stop at nothing to get it back.)





	Your Theory of Everything

Sana taps a rapid staccato on the questionably stained tabletop. Chaeyoung tries her best to ignore it, because she knows the older girl is fidgety at her best. In any case, Chaeyoung would rather have Sana drilling a hole through the cheap plastic than her usual habit of rocking relentlessly in her folding chair -- especially when the poor thing only has two good legs to stand on in the first place. 

Sana suddenly sits up, and sympathy for the chair flashes briefly through Chaeyoung’s mind. Then the older girl slumps forward again, her forehead hitting the table with a soft thud as she whines, “Chaeng, I’m _bored_.”

“I know, I know.” Chaeyoung reaches over to rub comforting circles into Sana’s back. Sana is hard to keep in one place on a normal basis, but when she has to cast an illusion as large as this one, she gets far more jittery than usual. “The fair is over in another hour and a half, so it won’t be long now.”

Sana turns her face so that her cheek is resting against the table, right on top of what Chaeyoung hopes is just the brown of an old coffee ring. “I still don’t get why we couldn’t have at least split the time into shifts or something. There’s eight of us, you know. Maybe Mina’s wrong for once?”

Chaeyoung gasps, deliberating placing one hand over her mouth and the other over her heart.

Sana sighs. “Yeah, I know, I take it back. But I think we can agree that what she sees is vague at best, sometimes.”

“We asked Nayeon-unnie too,” Chaeyoung says reasonably, “and she agreed that it had to be us two.”

Sana groans again and somehow slumps even further into the table. “I hate it when she gets to be right.”

Chaeyoung is about to comment on the irony of exactly how often Nayeon happens to be correct, but then someone steps out of the stream of students milling through the campus club organization fair.

Sana shoots up. Chaeyoung jerks back, but still gets a face full of hair. She yelps; Sana ignores it in favor of bouncing in her seat. “Hey, that girl noticed us!”

“Yeah,” Chaeyoung grumbles, blinking rapidly as she waits for the sting to leave. She rubs at her watery eyes as the girl comes closer. The face is already familiar, and Chaeyoung can’t help but break into a grin. “Wait...Jihyo-unnie?”

The girl immediately beams when she reaches their table. “Chaeyoung! I thought that was you.”

“I’m Sana,” Sana pipes up, and Jihyo matches her bright eyes and brilliant smile. Chaeyoung is impressed.

Jihyo introduces herself as Chaeyoung’s classmate from Art History, and then glances down at their empty table. “So what club is this?”

Chaeyoung finds not only Jihyo, but also Sana looking at her. Her mind blanks, and she shuffles the deck of cards in her hands as she thinks. In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to come up with a script, or at least some sort of introduction for their very first active recruitment endeavor. But her cards had failed to inform her, and Mina hadn’t provided many details in preparation for this situation. So Chaeyoung settles with, “It’s sort of hard to explain.”

Jihyo’s gaze catches on the flurry of movement under Chaeyoung’s restless fingers. “Are those Tarot cards?”

Chaeyoung nods, bridging the cards again. One of them flips out of the deck, landing face up on the table.

Sana leans over, craning her neck since the card has fallen horizontal to them. “The World?” 

“What does it mean?” Jihyo leans in too, staring intently at the design. Meanwhile -- Chaeyoung notes with a roll of her eyes -- Sana sits back again to stare intently at Jihyo.

Chaeyoung reflects that Sana is only subtle because she’s so blatantly obvious, since Jihyo somehow ignores the ogling entirely to look expectantly at Chaeyoung. The younger girl realizes then that her classmate is still waiting for an answer, so she says, “It depends on the orientation. If it’s right side up, it means things like harmony, unity, or completion.”

Sana hums, redirecting her attention to the card on the table. “That’s not bad at all.”

“And if it had landed face down?” Jihyo asks curiously.

“That’s not what I meant.” Chaeyoung reaches out and spins the card 180 degrees. “If it’s reversed, like now, it would mean the exact opposite.”

Sana wrinkles her nose. “So things like destruction and falling apart.” She pauses. “But it landed right side up, right?”

“Probably,” is what Chaeyoung decides as she sweeps the card up and slides it back into her deck. “It wasn’t vertical for our side of the table, and it wasn’t for Jihyo-unnie either, so it can’t be right side up or upside down. But I guess it could mean something for both sides.”

“You believe in things like fortune telling, then?” says Jihyo, her tone light but also serious. 

Chaeyoung shrugs. “Weirder things have turned out to be true.”

Jihyo laughs. “I guess. Like how no one else in this entire fair seems to have noticed your table?”

Sana leans back in her chair, smirk tugging at her lips. “We decided to be minimalist with the advertising.”

“That must be it,” Jihyo agrees easily. “So when does your club meet? Maybe I’ll drop by.”

“Whenever you want, really. We’re in the old chemistry classroom in the science building almost every day after classes.” Chaeyoung slips the card deck into her pocket, trading it for one of her Sharpies. “Here, give me your arm.”

Jihyo pulls up her sleeve and watches as Chaeyoung carefully writes the room number on the inside of her wrist. “Are you guys under budget or something? You don’t even have a flyer?”

“It fits her aesthetic better this way,” Sana chirps, only yelping a tiny bit when Chaeyoung kicks her lightly in the knee. The action makes the other two glance at Chaeyoung’s shoe, graffitied -- tastefully, of course -- with her favorite Sharpie colors. But Sana chooses against commenting on it like usual in favor of grinning at Jihyo. “And now there’s no way you can forget!”

Jihyo chuckles as she rolls her sleeve back down. “That’s true. I’ll see you around, then, Chaeyoung.” Her eyes curve up a little more, grin widening. “Bye, Sana.”

Sana waits an entire two seconds after Jihyo disappears into the crowd to throw her arms around Chaeyoung. “Please help me.”

“I can’t tell if Jihyo-unnie is that oblivious, or is maybe also interested,” Chaeyoung comments, unmoved even as Sana adds progressively more weight onto her shoulders. “You practically melted when she laughed just now. I would’ve let you give her the room number, but I was afraid you’d leave your phone number instead.”

“Okay, yes, Jihyo is unbelievably cute,” says Sana a little breathlessly. “But also, this chair has been off-balance ever since I leaned back on it, and I’m about two centimeters from falling over completely.”

Sana suddenly squeaks, and the weight on Chaeyoung’s shoulders presses down with a renewed force. Chaeyoung hurries to wrap an arm around her waist. With some maneuvering, the two of them manage to get Sana’s chair on decent footing again. 

Sana lets out a sigh of relief. “That was a close one. Thanks, Chaeng. Have you been working out?”

Chaeyoung makes a face, Tzuyu’s deadpan observation from the other night echoing briefly in her mind. “According to some, not really, but thank you for noticing. Anyway, we’re done here now.” 

Sana hops up and helps fold the chairs while Chaeyoung flips the table onto its side. Once they’ve pushed the legs in, Chaeyoung hefts the table and tucks it under one arm. Sana snaps her fingers before grabbing a chair in each hand. The passing students jump back a little, but otherwise make room for them as they slip into the crowd on their way back to the supply tent of the organization fair.

-

When Jeongyeon steps into the gymnasium, she isn’t ready for the sudden quiet that echoes with every step. She frowns -- it’s late and the usual sports teams have finished practicing by now, but Momo’s cheer squad usually stays for an hour or two more to polish their routines. So when not even a single shout interrupts the thud of her shoes against the chilled asphalt floor, Jeongyeon can’t help but shift her backpack before breaking into a jog.

She’s probably overthinking, she knows. Nayeon constantly complains about it -- especially after that one time the older girl had returned to her apartment after a round of clubbing and didn’t text Jeongyeon anything after a late-night _omg help me_. Jeongyeon had accordingly barged into Nayeon’s apartment twenty minutes later with three of the undead summoned behind her, ready to fight whatever needed fighting against.

It turned out that Nayeon hadn’t meant her text quite in the way that Jeongyeon had interpreted it. In fact, many of Nayeon’s messages whenever Tzuyu was concerned generally carried a similar flavor, albeit usually not sent at two in the morning after consuming copious amounts of alcohol in public. So when Jeongyeon had burst into Nayeon’s living room only to find the older girl very much okay and very much on top of a half-dressed Tzuyu, she quietly dismissed the undead she had summoned and briskly exited the building. 

Not that she particularly cares about whatever Nayeon might still have to say on the subject, but the fact that Tzuyu couldn’t hold more than a two-sentence conversation with her for an entire month afterwards is more than enough for Jeongyeon to try and be a little less prone to panic. Still, she can’t help the uneasy feeling that now settles in her gut as her rapid footsteps echo in the empty gymnasium hallways. 

She reaches the basketball court and pushes the door open, the clanking of metal hinges ringing in the large arena. 

The large, empty, arena. 

Jeongyeon frowns. “Momo?” Not even the shadows shift, and she quickly makes her way down from the stands and onto the court, her heartbeat accelerating into a rapid drumbeat against her ribcage. “Momo? Hey, Momo!”

The door to the girls’ locker room is propped open with a traffic cone, and Jeongyeon quickly steps over it. “Momo! It’s Jeongyeon. Are you here?” 

Somewhere in the shower area, a leaky faucet drips onto the porcelain sink underneath it, and a steady stream of water trickles through the pipes running against the ceiling. The fluorescent buzz of the lights overhead muffles the rest of the locker room with an electric tension.

“Hello?” Jeongyeon peers around the first locker bank. “Is anyone here?”

Something hits the locker on the other side; she jumps nearly a meter into the air. Then she shoves a hand into her jacket pocket, fingers tightening around her car keys. Her palms are already sweating -- she hopes she can keep a good grip if needed. “Who’s there?”

“Jeong,” a voice calls out, weak.

“Momo!” Jeongyeon immediately dashes around the corner. Momo is on the floor, in sweatpants and her cheer uniform top, slumped against the locker as she shudders uncontrollably. 

Jeongyeon rushes over, banging her knee against the cement as she drops to the ground. She gingerly wraps her arm around the other girl’s shoulders. “Shit. Momo, what happened?” 

“I...I don’t know.” Momo’s teeth chatter, and she lifts a hand to grab at the front of Jeongyeon’s shirt. “Cold… can’t stand…”

“Here.” Jeongyeon slips out of her jacket and drapes it around the other girl. “Just lean on me. Let’s get you out of here.”

Momo’s grip tightens. “It could still be here.”

Jeongyeon stiffens. “It? What? Did something attack you?”

“Cold,” Momo whimpers. “It...took...my baton.”

Jeongyeon immediately glances around; Momo’s baton is nowhere in sight. She grits her teeth. “Okay, stay right there, alright? I’m not leaving. I just need to get some help.”

Momo reluctantly loosens her hold -- a whisper of one to start with, and Jeongyeon tries not to clench her already aching jaw even more. She shuffles back so she has more room. Her car keys are in her hand, and she wastes no time scoring a circle into the ground around her. Then she steps out of it, connecting lines into shapes and shapes into lines, before etching a name along the circumference.

She stands and steps back just as the circle begins to glow. Slowly, a figure rises from beneath the floor. Jeongyeon lets out a breath, belatedly wondering if this one had been the best choice. Then again, she’d just come from Ancient Korean History class, so she couldn’t really be blamed for being in that frame of mind when she was racking her brain for who to summon.

A gray-skinned man now stands in the circle, tattered silk robes rustling slightly as he joins his hands in front of him and bows. 

Jeongyeon quickly brings her hands together and returns the gesture. “Thank you for answering. I need to bring my friend somewhere safe. Will you please watch over us?”

The man nods once, and Jeongyeon takes another step back so he can leave the circle. Then she turns to Momo. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

“Won Gwang?” Momo quietly reads the name inscribed on the floor as Jeongyeon ditches her backpack in favor of slinging the other girl’s arm over her shoulder. “Who’s that?”

“Just some monk guy who taught a bunch of killer soldiers back in the tenth century,” Jeongyeon murmurs as they take a tentative step forward. Momo dutifully tries her best, and her footing is steady despite how much she’s shivering against Jeongyeon’s side. Jeongyeon bends down a little to grab both her bag and Momo’s by their shoulder straps. “I figure if he was their teacher, he’s got to be at least as good as they were.”

“Probably,” Momo agrees. “I guess it’s gone, though.”

“What is?” Jeongyeon frowns. “The thing that attacked you?”

Momo nods tiredly as she leans her head against Jeongyeon’s. “It took my baton.”

Jeongyeon bites her lip. “Is that why you’re so cold?”

Momo gives a faint shrug. “I’ve never not had it with me, so it’s hard to say for sure. But I can’t make fire anymore.”

Jeongyeon curses under her breath. “Okay, I guess that makes the hospital out of the question. We’ll just have to go to Nayeon-unnie’s, then. She’s closer than our apartment.”

Momo murmurs something, but Jeongyeon misses it as her mind races, glancing around the rest of the locker room as they make their way out. Won Gwang holds the door open for them, and they shuffle back across the basketball court. The gymnasium is as quiet as it had been when Jeongyeon first arrived, and the uneasiness curling at the bottom of her stomach refuses to leave even after they exit the building.

Momo doesn’t stop shivering.

-

Tzuyu likes spending her time with Nayeon in the older girl’s apartment because she appreciates the way Nayeon’s decorated the place. The living room has soft fairy lights lining the walls, photos of various friends taped below them. There’s even an entire section, right above the comfy armchair in the corner by the window, that’s just pictures of Nayeon and Tzuyu and Kookeu and Gucci. Tzuyu is loath to leave the armchair whenever she’s over, despite her girlfriend’s multiple attempts to move her to the couch in the middle of the room for more comfortable cuddling.

Tzuyu never relents, especially since the tug-of-war usually ends with Nayeon sitting very snugly in her lap. But today, they’re just getting comfortable when Jeongyeon suddenly starts trying to kick down Nayeon’s door from the outside.

Tzuyu slips her arm from Nayeon’s waist, and the older girl gets up to answer the frantic thudding. “Yoo Jeongyeon, if you end up flaking paint off the door, you’re definitely paying for it!”

The door fortunately remains intact. But when Nayeon opens it, Jeongyeon stumbles in with a limp Momo hanging off of her. Tzuyu jumps to her feet. “Is Momo-unnie okay?”

“I don’t know,” Jeongyeon grunts. 

“Yes,” says Nayeon, almost at the same time. Then she pauses. “Well, no. ‘Yes’ in the way you meant it, ‘no’ in other aspects.” She scrambles to get under Momo’s other arm, and the two of them manage to get Momo from the entrance hallway to the couch. 

Jeongyeon exhales, shoulders relaxing a little, but her frown remains. “Something attacked her after cheer practice and took her baton. She’s cold and won’t stop shivering.” 

Tzuyu grabs the blanket draped over the armchair -- the one Nayeon had gotten her for her birthday because it was warm and fuzzy and cow-print -- and wraps it snugly around Momo. “Is this enough, unnie? Should I get more?”

Momo gives her a shaky smile. “It’s okay, Tzuyu. Thank you.” 

“Your teeth are still chattering,” Tzuyu tells her. “We have more blankets in Nayeon-unnie’s room.”

Tzuyu is two steps past the kitchen, considering whether stuffed animals might also help with heat retention, when she remembers Nayeon’s roommate. And apparently, Nayeon has, too.

“What were you thinking?” Nayeon whispers angrily. “You can’t just bring your dead people into my apartment!”

“Well, sorry for being more concerned for the wellbeing of our friend,” Jeongyeon hisses. “Look, it’s no big deal. I’ll just make his return circle here and get him out before your roommate notices.”

Nayeon gasps. “Oh, like hell you are. Do you know how much I get charged if there are scrapes on the hardwood? My landlord is going to have an aneurysm if he finds an entire _necromancer circle_.”

“It comes out!” Jeongyeon shoots back. “Dahyun made the polisher last month, in case your binary brain forgot.” Then she pauses. “Shit. I forgot to erase the circle back at the gym.”

Nayeon throws her hands up. “Do I have to do _everything_ around here?”

“Um.” Jihyo, standing awkwardly in the doorway to the kitchen a few steps from Tzuyu, clears her throat. “Would now be a good time to ask what exactly is going on?”

“Oh, hey there, roommate.” Nayeon quickly whips around and grins. “Nothing’s going on. Our friend just has a bit of a cold, and we’re trying to figure out what medicine to get her.”

Jihyo crosses her arms. “Unnie, you should know that you’re not very good at whispering.” She switches her glare to Jeongyeon. “Neither of you are.”

Jeongyeon, at least, has the decency to look sheepish. “So you heard everything?”

“I’d like to say that I didn’t, but,” Jihyo casts a wary glance at the gray-skinned man standing stoically in the corner, “it would explain the sudden presence of a zombie in our living room.”

“He’s not a zombie,” Tzuyu says automatically. “Jeongyeon-unnie gets really offended when you say that.”

“He can hear you,” Jeongyeon hisses. “And I’m already asking them a huge favor, disturbing their eternal rest to help me out from time to time. So can we please not treat them like they’re a part of a crowd of mindless monsters trying to board the train to Busan?”

“Okay, whatever, this _very kind gentleman_ ,” says Jihyo, “is definitely not from this life -- I doubt he’s even from the last century. So when I heard you talking about necromancy, it’s actually not too big of a leap to make.”

“It could be,” Nayeon says suddenly, grin plastered on her face. “You’ve been really tired this week, Jihyo. Maybe you’re just hallucinating. In fact, I bet if you go back to bed, this very kind gentleman will just...disappear.” 

Jeongyeon yelps as Nayeon’s very sharp elbow finds home between her ribs. She rubs at her side as she shoots the older girl a glare that makes Tzuyu wonder if, after Jeongyeon kills Nayeon, she’d still do Tzuyu a favor and summon her soon-to-be-dead girlfriend so they can continue cuddling after this is all over. “Jihyo is twenty-one, not five, unnie, and Sana’s not even here to help you make him _not_ look gray.”

“Jeong’s right,” says Jihyo. “Look, I know that weird stuff happens sometimes. But if your friend here,” she glances at Momo, “can’t go to a hospital, we still need to figure out a way to make her better, right?”

“We could ask Dahyun-unnie,” Tzuyu says. “Maybe she can make a medicine or something.”

Nayeon narrows her eyes at Jihyo. “You’re taking this all way too well. But we’ll deal with you later. First, call Dahyun.” Nayeon whips out her phone, but then pauses. “I don’t even know where to begin.” She turns back to Jeongyeon. “What did you say? Someone took her baton?”

“I can’t make fire anymore,” Momo mumbles from the armchair. “I can’t even keep my own body heat.”

Jeongyeon runs a hand through her hair. “This is bad.”

“What gave you that idea?” Nayeon snarks back, but Tzuyu tunes out the rest of their worried bickering as she heads into the kitchen. She scans the countertops and table as she racks her brain, but she can’t think of anything that might help. Then her eyes settle on the freezer. 

Tzuyu remembers a couple of weeks ago when Nayeon had fallen off the arm of the couch and bruised her ankle on the coffee table. Luckily, Jihyo keeps an ice pack in the freezer, and it’s this that Tzuyu looks for when she pulls the door open. She finds the pack easily enough, hidden behind a bag of peas and Nayeon’s red bean ice cream that Jihyo sometimes steals bites out of -- not that Tzuyu would ever tell, because it’s funnier to convince Nayeon that she’s been sleep-eating the whole thing herself this entire time.

The thought helps the ice in Tzuyu’s hands warm, and three seconds later she walks out of the kitchen with a heat pack. She heads straight for Momo, tucking the pack under the other girl’s shaky fingers. “Here, unnie. This will probably help more.”

“Thanks,” Momo says with a soft smile as Tzuyu wraps the blanket more tightly around her.

“Let’s just go to the clubroom,” says Nayeon from behind them. “Dahyun will definitely be there, and maybe the others will have an idea of what to do.”

Jeongyeon nods. “Yeah, I guess we don’t have other options.”

“I’ll come too.” Jihyo steps forward. “You’ll probably need all the help you can get.”

“You don’t have to,” Nayeon says again. “You might get caught up in something you’d rather stay out of, you know?”

“You’re my roommate, unnie, so I’m already going to be involved either way,” Jihyo deadpans. “And, I just watched Tzuyu turn a blanket into a coat.”

The three of them glance at the armchair. Momo is now snugly zipped in a puffy down coat, arms bent barely enough to hold the heat pack underneath the layers pressed against her torso. 

Tzuyu straightens, looking at Jihyo. “Unnie, are you going to be doing anything with the peas in the freezer anytime soon?”

Jihyo blinks. “If you’re hungry, I can cook them now --”

“That’s okay.” Tzuyu steps past her on the way back to the kitchen, and returns a few moments later with another heat pack. “If Momo-unnie can’t keep her own body heat, we have to make it for her.”

“You’re amazing,” says Nayeon, and Tzuyu decides to ignore Jeongyeon’s and Jihyo’s collective eye-roll as she channels the swelling she feels in her heart -- and maybe under the flush of her cheeks -- to make the pack she’s holding against Momo’s waist extra warm. 

“Okay,” Jeongyeon says. “Let’s go.” She turns to bow slightly at Won Gwang, who is still standing in the corner. He bows in return, and then heads to the front door to hold it open for them. Tzuyu helps Momo up, and Jeongyeon comes around to support her other side. 

Nayeon and Jihyo step out of the apartment first. Nayeon spares Won Gwang a glance. “You know, if he feels like hanging around, we could definitely use a buff doorman to keep strange creatures out of the apartment. Namely, Jeongyeon.”

“Come on, unnie,” Jihyo says over Jeongyeon’s rising protests. “Let’s get to that clubroom of yours.”

“After she gets rid of that monstrosity of a geometry problem on the locker room floor,” Nayeon reminds them. “I’d imagine the custodians won’t be terribly excited otherwise.”

Jeongyeon turns to make a rude gesture in Nayeon’s general direction. But Tzuyu ignores them, wrapping her arm around Momo a little tighter and thinking furiously about Nayeon’s fairy lights and the coziness of their clubroom every time she feels the heat pack start to cool.

-

Mina is about half a level from beating the rhythm game on her phone when Sana walks in. The older girl heads straight for Mina’s seat; Mina, phone still in hand, leans back so that Sana can slide into her lap. Then she adjusts so that she can rest her forearms on Sana’s shoulder blades and continue tapping at the screen, because _she’s almost done_.

“Hey, unnie.” Dahyun’s voice comes from the lab bench across the room. Mina glances up briefly, catching the view of the younger girl tugging down her goggles so they hang around her neck. Dahyun grins. “How was your day?”

“Chaeng and I found the person we’re supposedly looking for.” Sana hums. “Park Jihyo. Don’t know if she’ll actually show up, though.”

“She will,” says Mina. Her phone sounds, and she beams as the banner across her screen announces a new high score.

Sana sits up a little straighter. “You think so? I mean, she managed to see through my illusion. But I couldn’t tell if she actually knows about magic, you know?”

“You made it so that only people with magic can see through it, right?” Mina says. “She’ll definitely be curious to meet others like her.”

Sana hums. “I hope so.”

“Someone’s excited,” Dahyun singsongs, pulling her goggles back on. “Also, if you aren’t wearing closed-toe shoes right now, I’d suggest you wait outside for the next fifteen minutes.”

“Dahyun,” Mina says mildly as she closes the game app and opens a video player instead. She types _Kim Dahyun experiment_ into the search bar. “You promised you wouldn’t have any more premeditated explosions in the clubroom.”

“I’m not _trying_ to make something explode,” Dahyun protests. “It’s just in case, you know? Safety first.”

Mina watches as a clip of Dahyun ducking for cover behind the lab bench plays on her screen. The benchtop is alight with at least three different colors of flame, and only Tzuyu, bursting into the classroom a second later and transforming the nearest desk into a fire extinguisher, manages to save them from going up in a rainbow of smoke. Mina looks up from her phone. “Whatever you’re about to do, I’d suggest not doing it.”

Dahyun pouts. The door swings open, and Mina is not even a little bit surprised when Jihyo is the first to peek in. “Hello?”

Sana jumps up. “You came!” 

“Oh, Sana.” Jihyo’s friendly smile predictably widens into a full-blown grin. “Wait, you’re all part of the same club?”

“Yeah.” Sana pauses. “What do you mean? Who else did you meet --”

“Park Jihyo, move yourself,” Nayeon whines from somewhere behind the younger girl. “You can flirt just as well inside of the room as you can from outside of it.”

Jihyo grumbles, but steps further in, Nayeon quickly following. Dahyun frowns as she squints past them. “Momo-unnie? Are you okay?” 

Mina stills. Sana, meanwhile, makes a beeline for the door. “Did something happen to Momo?”

“I’m just a little cold.” Momo shuffles into the room, bundled in a cow-print down jacket. She looks like she’s holding something underneath the coat, and Tzuyu is next to her, hand pressed to a similar lump at her back. 

“Something attacked her,” Jeongyeon says as she shuts the door behind them. “And took her baton. So she can’t control any heat now, even in her own body.”

Sana immediately rushes forward, reaching for Momo’s shoulders. “Something _attacked_ you? Where? How? We have to get your baton back!”

Momo shrugs, but closes her eyes and sinks into Sana’s careful hug. 

The door opens again. “Hey, every -- oh, hi Jihyo!” Chaeyoung beams. “Glad you could join -- Momo-unnie?” Her brow quickly furrows. “Are you okay?” In another circumstance, Mina might find the runaway stream of consciousness funny, but she can’t say much now when her own thoughts are similarly jumbled.

“I’m less cold now,” says Momo, stepping back from Sana. “But I still can’t do anything.” She looks down at her hands.

“Unnie,” says Dahyun softly. “What happened?”

Momo frowns. “I’m not sure. We just finished practice, and I stayed behind to clean up since the basketball team complains whenever all their cones aren’t returned. I was in the locker room, and then there was like, some kind of bright flash? It felt like all the warmth in my body was getting ripped out of me.” Momo hugs herself a little tighter, and Tzuyu tucks herself a little closer against the older girl’s back. “Then the light was gone, I was cold, and I couldn’t find my baton. I think maybe ten minutes later, Jeong found me.”

Mina searches _Hirai Momo locker room light_. There are too many results, so she adds the date to the search bar and finds one video. She stands up and walks over to the others. “Watch this.” 

All nine huddle around Mina’s tiny phone screen. The clip gives them a view from above, and proceeds much like Momo had described: she arrives at her locker and begins to turn the combination. Then there’s a flash from somewhere behind her. She crumples to the floor, nearly banging her head against the locker door. The flash fades, Momo huddles into herself, and the baton that had been leaning on the bench beside her is no longer there. Seven minutes later, a particularly violent shiver drives her shoulder into the locker, and Jeongyeon rushes in. 

“Wait.” Dahyun’s hand shoots out and grabs Mina’s phone. “Can you play that again?” 

Mina taps the replay icon and lets Dahyun scrub through the clip until the flash reappears. Dahyun squints, and then lifts the phone out of Mina’s hand, nose almost pressing against the screen. “Yeah, I think that’s anti magic.”

Chaeyoung frowns. “Anti magic?”

“Anti magic.” Dahyun returns Mina’s phone. “Think of it like antimatter, but for magic, obviously. Anti magic and magic are exact opposites, so when they meet, they annihilate each other.”

“That can’t be true,” says Tzuyu, eyes wide. “You mean that Momo-unnie’s baton is gone forever?”

Dahyun hesitates. 

“No,” says Nayeon. “It’s not gone forever.” She glances at Dahyun. “But yes, it’ll be hard to get back.”

“I might be able to figure something out,” Dahyun says after a moment. “But it’s going to take a while. And since we don’t know anything about how that flash got here or where it might show up next, we have to be very, very careful.”

The circle falls into silence, except for the occasional rustle of Momo’s down coat. Finally, Jihyo clears her throat. “So, would now be a good time to ask about this magic stuff?”

“Right.” Sana tries for a smile. To her credit, she manages to get it most of the way, stopping just short of her eyes. “Welcome to the magic club!”

“And not the card game,” Chaeyoung adds. “I’m the only one with cards.”

Mina tucks her phone back in her pocket. “You said you did meet at the fair, right?”

“Yeah, we did.” Sana’s expression slips into a pout. “Even though you made us wait like, five hours for it.”

Nayeon raises her eyebrows. “Hold on. You mean that _my roommate_ was the one Sana and Chaeyoung were supposed to recruit?”

Mina shrugs. “I didn’t know she was your roommate, unnie, but yes.”

Jihyo takes a step back. “So you are all...in the same club. And all have magic powers?”

“Yup.” Nayeon nods. “Each of us does something different. I’m a Teller.” 

Jihyo blinks. “So you talk a lot?”

“Yes,” Nayeon says with a roll of her eyes, “but also, I can answer any question you ask me.”

“It has to be a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question,” Jeongyeon adds. “For example,” a smirk tugs at her lips, “Is Im Nayeon a sore loser?”

Nayeon holds up a finger. “That answer is an easy yes. But don’t act like you aren’t one either, Yoo Jeongyeon. And bonus: Mina is actually the sorest loser out of all of us. We just never get to see it because she wins all the time.”

Mina shrugs. “Sounds like something a sore loser would say.”

“Hi, Kim Dahyun, resident alchemist,” Dahyun says brightly. “And a successful one, because I can definitely turn anything into gold. But that would be unethical, so I usually refrain from doing so.”

“Wait.” The corner of Jihyo’s lips quirks. “The only thing stopping you is _ethics_?”

“That, and Mina-unnie showing me all the future news articles they’d write about me when I get caught and locked up in jail for a thousand years,” says Dahyun. “I can do other stuff, too! Think of it like chemistry, but without all of those pesky science rules.”

“Sounds useful,” Jihyo agrees.

“I use Tarot cards,” Chaeyoung says next. “And Sana-unnie can cast illusions. But I think you figured that out already, more or less.”

“You also know that I can transform things,” says Tzuyu. “And that Jeongyeon-unnie is a necromancer.”

“Oh, right.” Jeongyeon glances at Dahyun. “Do you have more of that circle remover? I have someone I need to send back.”

Dahyun eyes the shadow looming respectfully outside the window in the door. “Yup, right away.”

“I’m Myoui Mina,” Mina finally says. “I can see the future, present, or past. But only parts of it, and I have to have some idea of what to look for.”

“Great.” Jihyo brightens. “Can you tell me what I can do, then?”

Nayeon blinks at her. “So you _do_ have magic, too. Is that why you’re not really surprised by any of this?” 

Jihyo shrugs. 

“Park Jihyo, right?” Mina pulls up the web browser on her phone and enters _Park Jihyo magic_.

“Huh,” says Jihyo, looking over her shoulder. “It’s really that simple.”

The results are in Japanese, and Mina forgets that Jihyo can’t read them right away. But then Sana takes a peek. The older girl’s head snaps back up, staring at Jihyo with wide eyes. “You can hypnotize people?”

Nayeon immediately narrows her eyes at the younger girl. “I knew it. There’s no way I’d suddenly get the urge to start doing the dishes voluntarily so often.”

Jeongyeon shudders. “I can only imagine the pure joy it must be to live with you, unnie.”

“It’s not just hypnosis,” says Mina thoughtfully as she skims through the article she’s opened. “Maybe attraction is a better word? Because you can also draw in inanimate objects.”

Tzuyu perks up. “So that’s how you found Minjoong last week.” 

“Actually, I just know where Nayeon-unnie puts her stuffed animals whenever she sleepwalks,” says Jihyo. “But yes, we can say that.”

Sana claps. “That’s so cool! Maybe you can help us get Momo’s baton back, then!”

The group immediately dissolves into several conversations: Jeongyeon wants to know whether Jihyo would be able to attract the anti magic itself, Sana asks Momo how she’s feeling, and Dahyun drops into an animated discussion with Chaeyoung about how they might counteract something that already counteracts them. 

Mina clears Jihyo’s search and types in _anti magic_. She skims through the first page of results, but doesn’t find anything more useful than what Dahyun has already told them. So she deletes the characters and writes _Momo recovers from anti magic_. There aren’t any videos, but her eyes widen as they catch a date listed under the top link. 

“-- and then we could just, you know.” Dahyun brings her hands together. “Catch it, maybe.” Chaeyoung’s nodding, but the older girl is now looking at Mina. “Mina-unnie? Did you find something?”

“The sixteenth,” says Mina. The rest of the girls pause and turn to look at her. She clears her throat, raising her voice a little. “We have until the sixteenth to figure something out. That’s when we can get Momo-unnie’s baton back.” She hesitates, and then figures she might as well reveal the entire consequence. “It’s our only chance.”

“Okay,” says Dahyun. “That gives us a little more than a week.” She claps her hands together and rubs them. “No problem. We’ll get Momo-unnie’s baton back, figure out all this anti magic business, _and_ ace our midterms.” 

Nayeon groans. “Don’t remind me. I haven’t even started studying for psychology.”

Jeongyeon glances at her. “Isn’t the entire exam true or false?”

Nayeon sighs. “Yes, I would totally cheat, but then Tzuyu would just make sad faces at me all day.”

Tzuyu beams.

Mina, meanwhile, glances back at Dahyun, who is busy pushing glassware around even as she talks with Momo, presumably to concoct something that might help the older girl ditch her heat packs. Chaeyoung is sitting next to them, running her fingers along the edges of her card deck, the Sharpie in her other hand doodling mindlessly across her jeans as she thinks. 

No one asks Nayeon if Dahyun’s bold declaration is right. Mina’s thumb hovers over the search bar. Then she exits the app, tucks her phone in her pocket, and wanders over to give Momo a hug.

-

The clubroom eventually empties out as the evening sinks into night. Momo remains sitting at the lab bench, sipping from the bottle Dahyun had ended up making for her. The liquid flows warm into her belly and spreads out to her limbs, and Momo is grateful for it; she’s started to forget how it feels to have heat naturally inside of her instead of having to desperately drain it from outside sources.

“Hey.” Jeongyeon slides into the seat next to her. “How are you feeling?” She thinks for only a second before saying, “Sorry, that was a dumb question.”

“It’s not,” says Momo. “I’m feeling a lot of things right now, I guess. Or maybe not enough.” She picks up the bottle again.

Jeongyeon traces a finger along the spot where the bottle used to be, and Momo imagines that the movement keeps some residual warmth on the countertop. She’s not sure, though, because she can’t feel it. 

“Do you ever wonder,” Momo starts. She looks down at the bottle her fingers are curled around, and starts to roll it between her palms. The heat lingers against her skin, but still drifts away a few seconds later.

“Do I ever wonder?” Jeongyeon tilts her head, and Momo swallows the lump in her throat.

She sets the bottle down in between them. “Do you ever wonder what you would be if you didn’t have your magic?”

Jeongyeon nods. “Of course. But,” she shrugs, casting an apologetic glance at Momo, “it doesn’t really affect my daily life as much. I mean, I don’t need to summon the undead on a regular basis, or anything.”

Momo manages a chuckle. “I don’t have to set anything on fire normally, either. But it’s different, you know, choosing not to do something, and not being able to do it at all.”

“You’re right.” Jeongyeon looks down at her hands, flipping them so they’re resting palm-up on the benchtop. She curls her fingers in a little, like she’s grasping at something that’s not quite there yet. “What does it feel like, usually?”

“Warm,” says Momo. Her fingertips have chilled, so she picks up the bottle and unscrews the cap again to take another sip. “That’s why Sana always sits next to me when we go to movie theaters that have the air conditioning on too high.”

“But you don’t overheat, or anything,” says Jeongyeon. “And that one time Dahyun needed ice for one of her drinks, you froze a whole glass of water.”

“Cold is the absence of warmth. I can give it and also take it in.” Momo can feel the heat from Jeongyeon’s body, now, sitting just centimeters away from her. She’d also felt the heat in the room leave over the course of the evening, dwindling as each of the other girls left, one by one. She sighs. “It’s like I’m living in someone else’s body. Like I’m no one without my magic.”

Jeongyeon stays silent. Momo gulps down another mouthful of warmth.

“I asked Nayeon-unnie, once,” Jeongyeon finally says. “if I was meant to have this magic. Do you know what she said?” 

Momo shakes her head.

“Well, she said ‘no’.” Jeongyeon scoffs, her mouth curving into a lopsided smirk. “But she was just being an ass, because she did that thing where she nods a little bit even as she says it. That’s how she cheats the system.” 

Momo smiles. “So you _are_ meant to have magic.”

“Well, sure.” Jeongyeon’s smirk softens into a smile. “But you know, even if ‘no’ had been the real answer, I’ve started to think that that wouldn’t be so bad, right? Because that would mean that I’m much more than just someone who can call upon the dead with a few lines and a peace offering.”

Momo’s head snaps up. “But you’re already more than that. Of course you are. You’re a good friend and a caring person, Jeong, and someone who’s smart and always looking out for us, even if there’s nothing to look out for.”

Jeongyeon laughs, and pulls Momo in for a hug. “I’ll take your word for it.” And then murmurs, “So when you look in a mirror, what do you see, then?”

Momo doesn’t answer right away. She rolls the bottle in her hands a few more times.

“I know you feel like losing your baton is everything. And maybe it is, almost.” Jeongyeon says after a beat. She waits another before she continues, “But I mean, who knows, maybe Dahyun could make one, somehow, or maybe you’ll just end up finding another. Because at the end of the day, it’s just a fancy stick. But we really, truly,” Jeongyeon pokes a gentle finger into Momo’s chest, “only have one of you.”

Momo laughs, leaning away slightly. “Jeong.”

“It’s true,” Jeongyeon insists. “I know it’s cheesy, but it’s absolutely true. We like you for _you_ , Momo, and not whatever fires you can make.”

Momo nods once. And then again. “Okay. Thanks Jeong, seriously.”

“Of course.” Jeongyeon’s hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing softly. “Want to go back?”

Momo smiles and shakes her head. “You go ahead. I’ll be back later.”

Jeongyeon nods, and bids her goodnight as she gives Momo one last pat on the back.

The other girl’s brief touch on Momo’s shoulder blade feels warm for a whole five minutes after Jeongyeon leaves. And Momo thinks that that’s as good a start as any. 

-

When Sana sends a message to Jihyo the next day, she’s a little surprised at how quickly the response comes. Maybe Nayeon’s text containing Jihyo’s number and a smug _good luck_ hadn’t been as tongue-in-cheek as Sana had initially assumed. 

The idea flutters at the bottom of her stomach, but Sana reminds herself to not think too much about it; only Mina knows how many times she’s tripped -- figuratively, and sometimes also literally -- and had Momo laugh at her while helping her up again.

Jihyo meets Sana in the clubroom a few hours later. It’s just after lunch, and the rest of the girls are busy in class -- or in Dahyun’s case, skipping class by locking herself in the apartment she shares with Chaeyoung and Tzuyu so she can “research without any distractions.” Sana feels more than a little bad that a lot of this whole “get Momo’s magic back” plan rests on one set of shoulders, but Dahyun seems excited enough at the challenge, even if it’s lined with a nervous energy that refuses to acknowledge failure and its consequences.

“So.” Jihyo clears her throat once they’ve set their bags down and exchanged greetings. “You’re going to help me figure out how to use my magic?”

Sana smiles as she shrugs. “Well, it depends on how much you can do already. I just figured that what I can do is the closest to what you can do, so maybe I’d be able to help in some way if you need it.”

Jihyo nods. “That makes sense. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever tried to do anything consciously before. It just happens sometimes, and it’s weird enough that finding out that it’s magic isn’t surprising at all.” She looks down at her palms. “Knowing that it is, though, hasn’t really given me any epiphanies yet.”

Sana hops onto the teacher’s desk, swinging her legs idly. “So what have you been able to do so far?”

Jihyo drops her hands and shrugs. “Sometimes I’ll be in the kitchen and the spoon I need will fly into my hand from across the room. It happened with a knife once, too, which kind of freaked me out.” She laughs. “Luckily I grabbed the handle and not the blade.”

“I see.” Sana hums. “And you hypnotize people too?”

“Apparently.” Jihyo raises her shoulders in another shrug. “I think we should take Nayeon-unnie’s words with a grain of salt, since she tends to exaggerate.”

“She likes to bend the truth when she can.” Sana chuckles. Then she tilts her head back, staring at the ceiling and the one flickering light in the corner by the door. “Do you ever...feel anything? When stuff like this happens? Maybe a tingle in your elbows? A kind of buzz in the back of your mind?”

Jihyo stays silent for a few seconds, and then shakes her head. “Not really. But I guess I didn’t know that I should be paying attention to that sort of stuff.”

“Yeah, good point.” Sana slides off of the desk. “Okay, why don’t we try something, then?” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a pencil. “Take this from my hand.”

Jihyo blinks at her. “Like, with magic?”

“Obviously.” Sana laughs lightly, and then tilts her head. “Come on, just try something. Anything.” She holds the pencil tip between her thumb and index finger, wiggling the eraser end in Jihyo’s direction.

Jihyo exhales. “Okay.” She stills, frowning as she stares at the pencil in Sana’s grasp. She purses her lips, and then clenches her teeth, the crease in her brows deepening as the seconds pass. She even reaches out a hand, palm outwards like Sana has seen in so many superhero movies. 

After a good minute of visible straining -- by Sana’s own count, which is admittedly often impatient -- Jihyo sighs and drops her arm. “This isn’t going to work.”

Sana nods once, thinking. Then she sets her pencil on the desk. “Here, let me try something.” Jihyo watches as she walks closer, until the two girls are face to face. Sana holds out her hands, palms up. “May I?”

Jihyo hesitates only a moment before wordlessly sliding her palms onto Sana’s. Sana hums, ignoring as best she can how soft and warm Jihyo’s hands are. “Okay. When I was first learning how to cast illusions, I would really have to imagine myself in it. Like, if I wanted to look like Superman, I’d go through all the motions of pretending to fly, and think about what my cape would look like, even how it would sound flapping in the wind.”

Jihyo giggles. “Is this a recent fantasy of yours?”

“Of course not,” Sana huffs. “I was four. And unfortunately I was a prodigy, because my parents really did think I had become Superman when in reality I’d just gotten thrown off my bike.” She clears her throat as Jihyo smothers a laugh. “Anyway, maybe that would help you too. Imagining whatever you want coming towards you, or something.”

Jihyo nods. “Alright, I can try that. Just one question, first.” She pauses. “Why are we holding hands?”

“Oh.” Sana glances down, trying to remember where she had been going with this. Then she decides to throw caution to the wind, because _whatever_ , Momo and Mina aren’t here to laugh at her, and Nayeon has already done so. She looks up again, grinning. “Maybe I just like holding the hands of pretty girls.”

Jihyo smirks, too, and Sana’s stomach drops a little as the other girl says, “Funny, I do too.” Jihyo falls silent again, and Sana holds her breath. “I guess it could still help me out, anyway.”

Sana raises her eyebrows. “How so?”

“Like this.” Jihyo tugs slightly, and Sana instinctively leans forward. 

She’s been meeting Jihyo’s gaze this entire time and trying not to think too much of it. But now, their noses centimeters from brushing, Sana stares into the other’s eyes and thinks of every cliche she’s ever read. Jihyo’s irises melt into silver magnets that pull her in even further, swirling with promises of the infinities Sana could spend the rest of her lifetime losing herself in. She’s only able to direct her gaze elsewhere when her mind drifts to Jihyo’s smile, and what it would feel like pressed against her own.

Then Jihyo slips one hand out of Sana’s grasp, reaching for somewhere behind her. “Got it.”

Sana blinks. Jihyo’s smile is as brilliant as ever, but now the younger girl is waving her pencil in her face. Sana straightens slowly, blinking again and again until the glint in Jihyo’s eyes softens into a mischievous twinkle. And Sana smiles because okay, she can work with this. “See? You did it.”

“With your help, of course,” Jihyo says, still grinning as she holds the pencil out.

Sana takes an exaggerated bow, sweeping her arm out to take the pencil back. “Glad to be of assistance.”

Jihyo laughs, and then clears her throat. “Should we try some other things? You know, just to make sure I’ve gotten the hang of it.”

“We could.” Sana holds out her hand again, tilting her head. “Shall we?”

She’s not looking directly into Jihyo’s eyes this time, and so manages to catch the other girl’s ears reddening even as Jihyo takes her hand. Then Jihyo steps into Sana’s space once more, and Sana feels her own face heat up accordingly. 

Jihyo’s free hand shoots out. Something flashes past Sana, and she squeals. She jumps towards Jihyo as she jerks away from the flying object, eyes squeezed shut and free hand flung out above her head. 

Sana only realizes that Jihyo’s laughing a few seconds later. She slowly cracks open one eye. Jihyo is holding Sana’s backpack, but drops it in favor of reaching out to pat Sana’s head. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you.”

“You think?” Sana huffs, straightening once more.

“Sorry,” Jihyo says again. Then she lifts their joined hands. “If you actually succeed in amputating all of my fingers with your death grip, can we call it even?”

“I’ll think about it,” says Sana. And she can’t help but smile when Jihyo safely summons Tzuyu’s succulent growing peacefully on the far windowsill and presents it to her as an added apology.

Jihyo, Sana’s hand still in hers, continues rearranging the clubroom’s movable pieces of furniture and other miscellaneous decorations. Together, they move around the room until one of Dahyun’s spare beakers decorates each desk. They go another round, so that the desks are now arranged in concentric circles -- “Like a real witches’ coven,” Jihyo says. 

Sana, meanwhile, has reluctantly traded Jihyo’s hand for a dustpan and broom. She bends down to sweep up the glass remains of a beaker marking Jihyo’s first and only casualty. “Is that what you think we are?”

Jihyo shrugs. “The witches were always my favorite characters in Macbeth.”

“Okay, nerd,” Sana says as she dumps the broken shards into the dustbin. And laughs when Jihyo shoves her in the shoulder. 

It’s only when Chaeyoung texts Jihyo to ask her where she is that the both of them remember classes. “Same time tomorrow?” Jihyo puts on her own backpack, and then Sana’s flies towards her from some forgotten corner. 

“Definitely.” Sana grins, happily accepting her bag -- and the fact that she’s tripped again, figuratively. But maybe this time, Jihyo will catch her before she smacks her face into the pavement.

-

“Okay,” Dahyun says a few days later. “Here’s the plan.” 

The nine of them are gathered in the clubroom again. Nayeon leans back in her seat, pulling at the edge of her sweater sleeve until Tzuyu reaches over and quietly laces their fingers together. It helps, but seconds later, Nayeon’s foot begins to tap. Tzuyu only spares it an amused glance before giving Nayeon’s hand a squeeze.

Dahyun stands at the front of the room. She uncaps the marker in her hand and begins to write on the whiteboard behind her. “First, what do we know? That anti magic cancels out any magical object that comes sufficiently near it. From Mina-unnie’s video, we can guess that the flash was about five meters from Momo-unnie in the locker room.”

“This will be impossible then,” Jeongyeon says from her spot in the back of the room. The circle of girls turns towards her. Jeongyeon shrugs. “I mean, I assume anyone I try to summon won’t be able to get within five meters of it, and that means they can’t do anything useful.”

“That’s true,” says Chaeyoung. “Anything magical that we throw will just get absorbed or something, right?”

“Right.” Dahyun points the marker at Chaeyoung. “But that’s exactly how we’re going to _win_.”

Sana frowns. “What?”

“Anti magic can only cancel out as much magic as itself,” Dahyun says with a grin. “It’s just math. So we keep throwing magic at it, canceling and canceling, until it’s small enough or completely gone.”

“But how will we know whether we have enough?” Jihyo asks. Nayeon glances over at her roommate, marvelling a little at how quickly the younger girl had fit into their group. Her hilarious mutual crush on Sana probably helped at least a little, and also the fact that she already knew Tzuyu and Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung. But Momo had easily dropped all formalities since Jihyo had already seen the older girl “pretty much dying in her living room,” and yesterday Dahyun had presented Jihyo with a personalized pair of safety goggles. Even now, Mina is already sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jihyo, leaning into her once in a while as she scrolls through her phone.

Nayeon’s foot stops tapping. It’s nice.

Dahyun takes a deep breath. “Well, that’s the question. Do we have enough, Nayeon-unnie?”

The answer rolls off Nayeon’s tongue without a second thought. “No.” She clears her throat. “We don’t have enough.”

The room stills for a moment, and Nayeon feels the tightening in Tzuyu’s knuckles. She rubs the tension out with her thumb, smoothing over each bump over and over again.

“So we can’t destroy it,” Sana says. “But can we still get Momo’s baton back? Somehow?”

“Right. That’s the next step of the plan.” Dahyun turns back to the board and begins scribbling names into columns. “From Mina-unnie’s videos and Nayeon-unnie’s answers, we can get the time and place, so we know when and where this confrontation is going to happen. Of course, some of us are better suited to this than others. But taking into account that everyone will want to be nearby to help out in some capacity, I think we can divide ourselves into these groups.

“First,” she circles the leftmost list of names, “Nayeon-unnie, Sana-unnie, Mina-unnie. Your magic is helpful from a larger distance -- predicting moves and casting illusions so passersby don’t get too curious.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Nayeon says. “But how would we be able to tell you anything we see?”

“Bluetooth,” Dahyun says with a grin. She pulls out a bag of earpieces. “Technology is almost on par with magic these days. Also, these cost way more than expected, so you can all take turns buying me lunch for the rest of the year.”

Chaeyoung raises her hand. “Considering that you used _my_ Amazon prime account to order those, I think I should get a discount.”

“Moving on.” Dahyun points to the second column. “Next, we have people who are most suited to distraction. That would be Jihyo-unnie, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu.” She begins to scribble additional details next to each name. “Jihyo-unnie should be able to attract the anti magic to her, at least partially while maintaining a safe distance. Chaeng and her cards, of course, will be super helpful. And Tzuyu can shapeshift all sorts of projectiles, I assume.” She pauses to glance over her shoulder at Tzuyu, who nods. 

Dahyun grins. “Great. Now, I say ‘distractions’ on the assumption that the anti magic is drawn to whichever magic appears closest to it. Kind of like a magnet; opposites attract and all that. Which means that the three of you will be chucking all sorts of stuff at it to keep it occupied. This is also important because the last group of people,” she boxes the rightmost column, “is going to depend on that.” 

“Why am I on the list?” Momo asks, frowning. “I can’t do anything, remember?”

Dahyun snaps her fingers and points at the older girl. “And that is exactly why you _need_ to be there.” She grins. “Unnie, you don’t have any magic right now. Which means the anti magic doesn’t care about you. You can walk right up to it, _into_ it even, and it won’t affect you at all.”

Momo’s eyes slowly widen. “So you think I can get my baton back that way?”

Dahyun nods sharply. “Exactly. And for your backup, Jeongyeon-unnie has her zombies -- sorry, her undead -- her bodyguards? Her friends. Her friends will be able to dive in long enough if needed, I hope, even if the summoning spell breaks once they get within the five meters. And I’ve got some portable explosions that might be useful if we need to make a quick retreat. A good way to scatter magic and distract the anti magic from other sources, and all that.” 

“One question.” Eight heads immediately turn to Mina. “Once Momo-unnie gets her baton back, we’re assuming her magic will return, right? So won’t the anti magic just take it away again?”

“Good thinking, Mina-unnie,” Dahyun says, grinning. The corner of Mina’s lips quirks up, and Dahyun quickly looks away. Nayeon glances between the two of them, wordlessly answering an unspoken question in her own head as Dahyun speaks again. “That’s why every ‘distraction’ we fire at it is important. Because we have to negate the anti magic enough that Momo-unnie can not only retrieve her baton, but also get away safely afterwards.”

Momo frowns. “I see.”

“So.” Dahyun glances around the room. “Thoughts?”

“It’s going to be hard,” Nayeon immediately says. “You don’t need to see the future to know that.”

“It’s also necessary.” Jeongyeon crosses her arms. “So I’m in. But I don’t think anyone should feel pressure to take a part in it, you know? This might not be deadly or anything, but it can still change your life as you know it.” She catches Momo’s gaze for a brief moment. “It’s something we should all think about carefully.”

Momo nods furiously. “I’ll be fine either way, honestly, everyone. So you don’t need to risk your magic just for a chance that might not even happen.”

“Don’t be silly,” Jihyo suddenly says. “You can tell everyone’s already invested, right? Dahyun just spent seventy-two hours scheming, and Chaeyoung’s been doodling weird symbols in her Art History notes every single lecture.”

“Dahyun-unnie’s not the only one who can experiment,” Chaeyoung huffs.

Jihyo laughs and continues, “Nayeon-unnie has barely said two sentences this entire time, which means she’s definitely serious, and Tzuyu’s been twirling an arrow in her hand for the past two minutes.”

Nayeon can’t even think of any words to defend herself, but she manages a chuckle at Tzuyu’s bemused expression as the younger stares down at the arrow she’d unconsciously transformed from her favorite pen. 

“Sana would obviously jump in front of a bus for you,” Jihyo says, ignoring said girl’s exclamations proclaiming the exact opposite, “and Mina would both push Sana out of the way and successfully stop the bus.” Jihyo’s smile widens. “And as for me, I didn’t even know until last week what to call this weird thing I can do sometimes. But you’re our friend, Momo. So of course we want to help.”

Momo blinks once, twice, and then quickly brushes an arm across her eyes. Her voice is rough as she mumbles, “Thank you.” Sana reaches over to rub the other girl’s back. 

Nayeon clears her head, and then her throat. “Yeah, what Jihyo said, but better. Since I’m the more mature and cooler roommate.” 

“That is _definitely_ not true,” says Jeongyeon. Momo laughs, Jihyo agrees, and Nayeon thinks that they might stand a chance, after all.

“By the way, Dahyun-unnie,” Chaeyoung suddenly says. “That’s one of my Sharpies that you’re using.”

Dahyun looks down at the marker in her hand. She squints at it, and then at the whiteboard covered with her frantic scribbles. She caps the Sharpie. “I can fix that.”

The next days pass in a frantic blur. The nine of them spend every spare second in the clubroom, clustered in various corners. Dahyun takes over several benchtops with a variety of glassware and curiously bubbling liquids that make satisfying sparks when she smashes them against the floor. She keeps track of the days in one corner of the whiteboard, crossing each date out and penning a new one next to it. She has yet to erase any of the other Sharpied words, but this new line of numbers marches across the top of everything with all the solemnity of an apocalyptic countdown.

Chaeyoung, meanwhile, flicks cards with increasingly terrifying precision at a target pinned onto the wall, alternating with whatever projectiles Tzuyu has been crafting from various office supplies she’s found lying around Nayeon’s apartment.

Sana and Jihyo continue their daily practice of Jihyo’s magic, although Jihyo promised to stop pulling in entire desks from across the room. Sometimes the air around the two of them shimmers a little, and Nayeon laughs to herself as she absentmindedly wonders what exactly might cause Sana to cast an illusion of the two of them doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

Jeongyeon sits with Nayeon and Mina most days, flipping through history books detailing great battles and wars of the past. She keeps a notebook of names in front of her, occasionally penning down another entry decorated with notes on how she might summon them -- or maybe just what that individual’s favorite food had been, for all Nayeon knows of the ancient runes that Jeongyeon writes with as easily as she uses her native script. Mina, meanwhile, searches her phone with an intensity even quieter than before, replaying any clips she can find until she knows each frame by heart.

Nayeon answers questions for the others whenever she can, but she knows better than everyone else that there are some answers better not known beforehand. The queries she gets are carefully chosen, few and far between, and she finds herself often wandering out of the clubroom and onto the quad, keeping Momo company as the cheerleader does backflips across the grass well into the evening.

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good thing to look into the future like this,” Nayeon tells Tzuyu on the night of the fifteenth. They’re nestled in Tzuyu’s favorite armchair in Nayeon’s apartment, as usual. Nayeon is sideways on Tzuyu’s lap, wrapped in a cow-print blanket Tzuyu had transformed one of Nayeon’s old quilts into -- she’d insisted that Momo keep the down coat, even with Dahyun’s concoction now providing the formerly fiery girl with plenty of warmth. Nayeon hugs Tzuyu a little tighter at the thought.

“It’s not good to think too much about these things, unnie,” Tzuyu says. She leans forward to rest her chin on Nayeon’s shoulder, soft breath heating Nayeon’s ear. “It’ll be like that one drama you wanted to watch, where the main character tries to change the future every time but always arrives at the same scene. Or that other drama you made us watch, when they didn’t try to change the future even though they knew it and in the end, everything turned out better than expected, because they had only been shown parts of the story. Or that other drama you --”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Nayeon grumbles, bringing a hand to the back of Tzuyu’s head and pressing her closer. The younger girl happily tucks herself further into the crook of Nayeon’s neck, her breath a gentle murmur against Nayeon’s throat. Nayeon sighs. “We’ll be okay, somehow.”

“We will be,” Tzuyu agrees with a hum that tickles Nayeon’s chin. “Whatever happens.”

-

Dahyun has gotten maybe four hours of sleep when she wakes up just before noon on the sixteenth. Which is four hours better than she had resigned herself to before Chaeyoung forced open her bedroom door and practically threw her onto her mattress -- whatever Tzuyu had said a couple weeks ago about Chaeyoung not working out had definitely been misguided. 

Dahyun still isn’t quite sure what happened between the younger girl tucking a blanket around her and her waking up the next morning, but one glance at the wall above her bed reveals four sharp-looking swords scrawled in purple Sharpie.

“Kind of threatening, isn’t it?” Dahyun asks as she enters the kitchen, sliding into her usual spot next to Chaeyoung at the table. An omelette is already plated and waiting, and she picks up her chopsticks. 

Chaeyoung looks up, a mouthful of egg bulging her cheek. “What?”

“I didn’t think drawing swords above my head would make me sleep any better.” Dahyun pokes at her omelette, and it holds its form much better than the last time Chaeyoung had tried to make breakfast.

Chaeyoung swallows before saying, “The Four of Swords is for rest and contemplation, unnie. I thought you said you’d already memorized the entire deck.”

“Only the intuitive ones,” says Dahyun, taking a bite of omelette; it’s a little burnt on the underside, but it’s salted just the right amount, so she has no real complaints. “Things like Judgement and the Sun are pretty self explanatory.”

Tzuyu steps into the kitchen before Chaeyoung can reply. “Good morning.”

Chaeyoung twists around in her chair. “Oh, I didn’t hear you come in last night. Weren’t you at Nayeon-unnie’s?”

“I asked her if she was going to kick a lot in her sleep and she said yes.” Tzuyu pulls the refrigerator door open. “So I came back.” She finds a bowl of rice and places the container in the microwave. Chaeyoung hums in understanding, although it gets lost underneath the drone of Tzuyu’s leftovers slowly heating.

Dahyun finishes her breakfast. She scoops up her plate, as well as Chaeyoung’s, and brings them over to the sink to wash later. She takes a deep breath, trying to remember everything they’ll need. The few videos of today’s events that Mina had managed to find had taken place in the gymnasium, and after a tedious process of asking Nayeon at exactly which hour the anti magic would appear, they now know that they have until a little after three in the afternoon. 

“Hey, unnie.” Chaeyoung comes up behind Dahyun and nudges the older girls’ shoulder with her own. “I think some of us are going to meet in the clubroom beforehand. Do you want to come?”

“You need to get out of the apartment, unnie,” Tzuyu says, warmed rice container in one hand. She grabs Dahyun’s wrist with the other. “Everyone’s worried, so we might as well just do it together.” 

Dahyun laughs. “Yeah, I guess you do have a point.”

“Here,” says Chaeyoung, holding out the hoodie Dahyun had thrown on the couch some day prior. “You’ll want this.”

The three of them make their way across campus. The air is indeed chilly, but it’s a nice day out: the sun is bright and the air smells of fresh-cut grass. They’ve caught the period between classes, so the breeze brushing past their ears is the only sound besides Tzuyu’s methodical chewing. 

“It’ll still be like this tomorrow,” says Chaeyoung, breaking the silence. 

“It will,” Dahyun promises, and tries to let the wind carry the last tendril of worry far from her mind. 

Still, the nervous energy that hits them when they step inside the clubroom is something Dahyun can’t ignore. Mina is in her usual seat by Dahyun’s main lab bench, mindlessly dragging her thumb across her phone screen as she watches the search page refresh again and again. Sana sits next to her, deep in conversation with Jihyo -- their smiles are tight at the corners, but they’re trying.

Nayeon slouches in the seat on Jihyo’s other side, shaking or nodding her head in time to the questions Jeongyeon murmurs into her ear. Momo sits at the other end of their half-formed circle, cheek resting in the palm of one hand while her other twirls a pencil like it’s a baton.

Mina looks up and smiles when Dahyun sits next to her. “Hey.”

“Hey, unnie.” Dahyun ignores the pitchiness of her voice, and more pointedly ignores the amused look Chaeyoung shoots her afterwards. She clears her throat as she peeks at Mina’s phone screen. “Anything new?”

Mina sighs. “Not yet, but we still have a little bit. And something might come up during, too.”

“Right,” says Dahyun. She nods and sits back, taking another deep breath. Then Mina’s poking her in the shoulder.

“Actually,” the older girl says. “Can I talk to you for a moment? Outside?”

“Oh.” Dahyun blinks a few times before she realizes she hasn’t given an answer. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, unnie.”

The two of them step into the hallway. Mina closes the door gently behind them, and then turns to face Dahyun, who chooses to lean her back against the wall. 

“So.” Dahyun grins briefly. “What did you want to talk about?”

Mina doesn’t say anything for a moment, but this is usual for her. Dahyun waits patiently until the older girl opens her mouth. “As you know, I’ve been trying to look into the future for how today might pan out.”

Dahyun nods. “Yeah, and you’ve been able to find out a lot already, unnie! I’m sure you’ll be able to see more as it happens, too, like you said.”

Mina smiles again, and Dahyun tries very hard not to notice that one corner of her lips pulls up more than the other. “Right. Anyway, I guess I should say that I saw something about the end of it a couple of hours ago --”

“What?” Dahyun’s eyes widen. “Was it...you know. Good?”

“Nothing conclusive,” Mina says, mouth twisting. She lifts her shoulders in a little shrug, and then glances away. “But it reminded me of an unrelated search I’d been doing once in a while ever since I discovered that I could sometimes see the future.”

Dahyun tilts her head. “What’s that?”

The older girl pauses again, and then turns back to Dahyun. “I’ve always wanted to know the kind of person I would be dating. But all the detail I could ever really get is that we have good chemistry.”

Dahyun’s stomach drops just a little. She wonders why Mina is telling her out of everyone else in the clubroom -- Sana, for example, had been sitting right on the other side, and is much more excitable when it comes to romantic gossip. Which makes Dahyun think that somehow she herself is involved in Mina finally finding love, and that realization makes her heart skip and then jump before it settles again.

“I can see you overthinking already,” Mina says. She isn’t smirking, but Dahyun can hear it curling her tone. “Maybe I should just show you the video.”

“Okay.” Dahyun leans closer as Mina pulls up the clip on her phone and positions the screen in between them. 

The video is short -- only a few seconds long. But it’s enough for Dahyun to see herself and Mina running towards each other. Dahyun recognizes the shirt she’s wearing as the one that’s under her hoodie currently, and Mina’s in the same flannel as she is now. 

The two of them meet and stop. Suddenly, video-Mina wraps her arms around video-Dahyun’s shoulders and leans in close. Dahyun catches a pixelated glimpse of Nayeon to the side with what could only be described as a heart-eyed expression, Sana jumping excitedly beside her, and then the video cuts.

“Interesting,” Dahyun says as Mina tucks the phone back in her pocket. “I would say that bodes well for today.”

“Maybe.” Mina’s mouth twitches.

“Hey.” Dahyun clears her throat. “About that chemistry. And you having it. With your future romantic partner.”

Mina raises her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Well, you know.” Dahyun shrugs, glancing away. “I happen to be pretty good at it. Chemistry, I mean.”

Mina laughs, soft and silvery. “I do have that impression, yes.”

“Good.” Dahyun nods. And then her stomach settles, her heartbeat steadies. So she looks up and grins. “Then what are you waiting for, unnie?”

Mina’s smirk makes it all the way to her lips this time. She doesn’t say anything, but she does lean in close, breath tingling against Dahyun’s cheek like a million tiny lightning bolts.

A second later, the clubroom door swings open and Tzuyu pokes her head out. “Are you ready, unnies? It’s time to go.” 

“We’re ready,” Mina says lightly. She glances over. “Dahyun?”

“Hm? Yup.” Dahyun barely refrains from reaching up to touch the pleasantly burning spot on her cheek. She wonders how a kiss so gentle could send such a strong jolt of fire through her entire body. “Yup, I’m ready.”

Tzuyu looks from Dahyun to Mina, and then back to Dahyun. She blinks once, and then one of her cheeks dimples the slightest bit before her expression straightens once again. “Let’s go, then.”

The nine of them make it to the gymnasium with few difficulties and even fewer words exchanged. When they reach the front doors, Nayeon turns around, crossing her arms. “So, are we ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Chaeyoung finally says, and the others nod. 

The building is mostly empty, although they do run into a few athletes and coaches wandering in the halls. Luckily, the basketball court Mina points them to is unoccupied.

“I guess it makes sense that it’s the same one Momo was practicing in before,” Jeongyeon says as they file inside. “But it still creeps me out.”

“Says the girl who literally talks to dead people,” Nayeon points out halfheartedly. Jeongyeon just reaches over and gives the older girl a pat on the shoulder.

“Let’s stay up here,” Sana says, gesturing to the top row of seats. “Mina and Nayeon-unnie can see everything, and I’m close enough to the doors to maintain the illusion.” The air shimmers around them as she speaks, and Dahyun can now make out a “Closed for Renovations” sign seemingly hanging on the window of the door they’d just entered through.

“You’ll have to cover any explosion sounds, too,” Dahyun reminds her. “I’ve got a lot in my bag, and I’m not sure exactly how much of the court we’ll have to repair after.”

“It’ll be fun,” Chaeyoung promises. 

“No explosions,” says Sana cheerfully. “Got it.”

“Okay,” says Jeongyeon, “as far as we can tell, it’s going to appear near the locker room. So Dahyun and I will wait with Momo across from the entrance, and maybe you three can stay on either side?”

Chaeyoung nods. “Jihyo-unnie and I can take one end of the court, and Tzuyu can take the other, as long as she promises not to shoot us accidentally, or on purpose.”

“I won’t,” says Tzuyu. “Momo-unnie, you said there’s sports equipment in the storage room?”

Momo nods. “Yeah, it’s that door by the locker room. I’ll unlock it for you.”

“Okay,” says Nayeon. “It’s almost three, so let’s get ready. Everyone, make sure your earpieces work.”

They make their way down the stairs until they can hop onto the court. Chaeyoung and Jihyo head for the right side. Tzuyu returns from the storage room with a hockey stick that’s already morphing into a bow as she walks, and a hefty stack of orange plastic cones. She drops the stack once she reaches her end of the court and picks up the top one, which immediately splits into two gleaming arrows that she nocks onto her bowstring.

“Have I ever told you guys how hot my girlfriend is?” Nayeon suddenly asks. Her voice crackles with static, but Dahyun rolls her eyes at the adoration still audibly nestled in the older girl’s question.

“Unfortunately, the earpieces are working,” says Jihyo.

“Disgusting,” Jeongyeon snorts at the same time.

Dahyun laughs, too, and then takes a breath. She glances at Momo, who’s standing next to her. “Will you be okay?”

“I drank enough of your potion beforehand,” Momo says, flashing a brief grin. “Your most recent version keeps me going for an hour, so that will be enough for this.”

Dahyun nods. “Right.” She looks at Momo again, but the older girl is now staring past her, at Jeongyeon scoring three circles into the gymnasium floor. 

“Kim Isabu, Kim Alcheon, Kim Wonsul,” Momo reads slowly as Jeongyeon carefully carves each name into the waxed hardwood. “Who are they?”

“Pretty famous figures in Korean history, I would say.” Dahyun scratches her head, watching as the circles glow and figures begin to rise from the floor. “Kim Isabu took over an entire island, Kim Alcheon supposedly strangled a lion with his bare hands, and Kim Wonsul fought the ancient Chinese army and won.”

Momo glances at her. “Any relation to you?”

“If I say yes,” Dahyun turns to the older girl, expression serious, “will you stop stealing my choco-pies?”

Momo laughs, and Dahyun lets her own shoulders relax a little.

“It’s here!” Jihyo yells. Dahyun whips around just in time to catch the bright flash blooming across from them. Two of Tzuyu’s arrows immediately fly into it, followed quickly by a shower of cards Chaeyoung throws from the other side. The light glows, swaying from side to side, and Dahyun squints against it. 

“Is that enough?” Momo is squinting, too, one hand shielding her eyes.

“No,” Nayeon says in their ears. 

“That’s fine.” Jihyo sounds like she’s gritting her teeth. “We just have to keep going, then.” She reaches out with both hands, and the ball of light begins to move slowly towards her. 

Chaeyoung pulls out a Sharpie and scribbles something on Jihyo’s arm. “Don’t tire yourself out, unnie.” 

Jihyo flashes her a brief grin, turning her wrist to see what Chaeyoung has written. “A star?”

“The Star,” Chaeyoung corrects. “There’s nothing wrong with having some extra hope,” she says, and then flings another set of cards at the anti magic. It inches closer.

“Tzuyu’s going to run out of arrows in a few minutes,” Mina tells them. “If you want more, you’ll have to get back to the storage room.”

“On it.” Jihyo runs to the far corner, by the same wall Dahyun and Momo are currently still pressed up against. She backs up until her shoulder blades hit the cement behind her, arms still outstretched. The light changes course accordingly.

Chaeyoung scrambles out of the way when it gets closer. “Is this enough, unnie?”

“No,” says Nayeon, voice tight.

“Dahyun,” Mina says at the same time. 

“Right.” Dahyun scrambles for the zipper on her bag, and pulls out a glass sphere of glowing green liquid. “Incoming!” She hurls the globe at the anti magic.

The glass shatters upon contact, and the liquid fizzes out in a shower of green sparks. The light stops and flickers, but remains strong.

Dahyun pulls her bag open further. “Here.”

Momo immediately reaches in and also grabs a sphere -- orange, this time. The two of them take turns throwing globes at the anti magic, which remains at a glowing standstill, fizzing slightly upon each impact. Until both Momo and Dahyun come up empty-handed; it suddenly jolts forward.

“Jihyo,” Jeongyeon suddenly yells. “Get out of there. You’re too close!”

Jihyo tears her gaze away from the anti magic, belatedly remembering the corner she’s backed herself into. She drops her arms. “Shit.” Then she screams, because she’s just been lifted into the air by a large gray man. He tosses her to another waiting in the lower stands just before the light closes in. 

“Thank you,” Jeongyeon murmurs as the man on the court falls to his hands and knees, slowly sinking into the glowing circle that has formed beneath him. A fresh volley of arrows follows. Dahyun turns and sees Tzuyu at the door of the storage room, several more stacks of plastic cones gathered at her feet.

“Is this enough?” Jihyo gasps, catching her breath as the undead general who had caught her sets her down carefully. 

“No,” Nayeon says quietly, levelly. “You know the answer won’t change no matter how much you ask.”

“Right,” says Momo suddenly. “So what we should be asking is, is now the time?”

Nayeon pauses for just a moment. “Yes.”

“Momo, be careful,” Jeongyeon calls. Dahyun tightens her grip on her bag, cautiously shuffling behind Momo as the older girl walks towards the anti magic. They get closer. Ten meters, maybe, and then six -- 

Dahyun stumbles suddenly; something is tugging at her gut and muddling her head. Her feet are too heavy, her knees too weak. She feels some part, some essence of her seeping out -- like one of her potions has tipped onto the counter and spilled over the edge, drop by drop, into oblivion.

Momo continues undeterred. Dahyun takes a step back, focusing on her lungs and her heartbeat and how she still knows how to change anything into a pile of gold, if she wanted to. 

“She’s really doing it,” Nayeon whispers. “She’s going to do it.”

Momo stops directly in front of the ball of light. She’s looking straight into it, not even bothering to shield her eyes. Then she reaches in with one hand.

Dahyun stops breathing.

The older girl braces herself, one foot behind the other as she extends her other hand inside. She begins to pull, and a collective gasp echoes around the arena when the end of a familiar baton emerges from the light.

Dahyun reaches for another explosive, but her fingers only scrape against the cloth bottom of her bag. Her mind races as she quickly scans the entire court, gaze landing on the storage room. She scrambles for it, hand in her pocket as she reaches the door. “Tzuyu! Pass me a cone.”

The other girl does so without a word. Dahyun pulls out a vial of liquid and pours it onto the cone. By the time her fingers grasp the top, the entire cone has changed into a lump of clay. She whips around and hurls it at the bright light, hoping that her aim won’t be too off. 

The light engulfs the clay cone, and Momo manages to take another step back. The rod is only halfway extracted. Dahyun can see the sweat beading on Momo’s temple, and how tightly the older girl grits her teeth as she tries to pull out her baton without being sucked into the anti magic herself.

“I can’t shoot anymore,” Tzuyu says, voice wavering. “It’s too dangerous.”

“No more cards from me either,” says Chaeyoung. She and Jihyo are standing at the half-court line, but don’t dare get any closer. “Papercuts are a serious hazard.”

There are no more traffic cones within reach. Dahyun slips off her empty backpack and empties another vial onto it. The cloth ripples into aluminium foil, and she crumples up the entire bag before throwing it again. It lands, and the light brightens. 

Momo loses a step. She yells, jerked forward as the baton slips further into the anti magic.

Dahyun’s earpiece crackles as Jeongyeon yells something from the other side of the court. The two remaining undead rush towards Momo and the anti magic, but collapse to their knees before they get close enough. They begin to glow, sinking slowly back into the ground even as Jeongyeon frantically scrapes extra runes around each of their summoning circles. The light drifts closer to her, and Momo doggedly follows.

“Jeongyeon-unnie, get out of there,” Mina’s voice cuts in through the earpiece. “You have to leave.” Tzuyu rushes past Dahyun, crossing the court in a matter of seconds. She drags Jeongyeon back towards the bottom of the stands Nayeon and Mina and Sana are perched on top of. 

Chaeyoung, meanwhile, has her Sharpie out and begins to draw: one stick, then two, then three…

A few seconds later, a giant Nine of Wands stretches across the half-court line. Dahyun remembers something vague about resilience, or a last stand. Whatever the case, her feet suddenly feel much less tired. Momo manages to straighten and, with a giant heave, retreat another step.

“Nayeon-unnie.” Jihyo’s voice comes in loud and clear. She’s in front of Chaeyoung’s Nine of Wands, almost in range of the anti magic. “I have an idea.”

“What?” The air above them shivers, but then Sana regains control of her illusion. “Jihyo, what are you thinking?”

“Unnie,” Jihyo says again, and even from across the court, Dahyun catches the steady look in the older girl’s eyes. “I have an idea. Will it work?”

There’s a pause. Just the crackling of static in Dahyun’s left ear, and she’s not sure which answer she’s holding her breath for.

“Yes,” says Nayeon, breathless and strained. “Yes, yes it will. But be careful, please --”

Jihyo dashes forward, straight towards Momo. Before Dahyun can blink, Jihyo is beyond the point where Jeongyeon’s summoned undead had returned to their afterlives. She stumbles, but just a little, and then flings her arms wide open. “Momo!”

Momo jerks back, almost losing her grip on her baton. She regains her hold just as her foot slips again, but she’s moving backwards, towards Jihyo. Her baton emerges further from the light, and Momo’s white-knuckled grip gets firmer and firmer with each centimeter gained. But her shoulders are shaking, sweaty bangs plastered to her forehead, and Jihyo’s arms are already trembling.

Dahyun feels the last vial in her pocket. There’s nothing left within reach that she can empty it onto, and there might not be enough time to root around in the storage room for other equipment. Her mind races, and the sweatshirt she’s wearing feels too warm and heavy against her back --

“Got it.” Dahyun quickly pulls the hoodie over her head, welcoming the cool gymnasium air on her bare arms. She opens the vial, watching as the cotton of her favorite sweater hardens into an enormous block of salt. “Look out!” She takes one step forward and heaves her latest projectile at the light.

The salt lands right in the middle of the anti magic. At the same time, the other end of Momo’s baton shoots out from the light. Momo and the baton fly backwards, straight into Jihyo. The two girls crash into the floor. Dahyun whips around to the anti magic.

It’s still blinding, maybe just the slightest bit smaller. But then the brightness increases, approaching a ferocious intensity. Dahyun instinctively squeezes her eyes shut -- the light burns through her eyelids, anyway.

Silence falls. She can’t tell if the arena is still blindingly bright. Her heart pounds in her chest, her lungs gasp for breath, and her shoulders sink from the weight of what it will feel like for none of them to have magic anymore.

“Dahyun!” Mina yells in her earpiece. But she’s laughing; Dahyun wonders for a moment what could possibly be so funny.

“Unnie.” Chaeyoung’s voice is in her ear now, but also in front of her. Then hands land on her shoulders, pulling her in for a hug. “We did it.”

Dahyun finally cracks open an eye. Spots dance in her vision, but they still leave enough to see a dim basketball court, empty save for Chaeyoung in her arms and Momo helping Jihyo up from the floor, her baton held firmly in her other hand. 

“We did it,” Sana agrees from somewhere far off, but the wonder in her voice overrides the static of Dahyun’s earpiece. “We really did it.”

“Told you so,” says Nayeon, her tone something like a tired dam that no longer needs to hold back the force of an entire river. “Or, I would have, if someone bothered to ask.” 

“Shut up,” Jeongyeon says, but she doesn’t even try to mean it.

“Dahyun,” Mina says softly, “I could kiss you.”

Chaeyoung scoffs before she pulls back from the hug, grin as wide as it is shit-eating. And Dahyun smiles back just as big, ignoring the flush in her cheeks as she says, “Well, unnie, what are you waiting for?”

Jihyo attempts something like a wolf whistle and fails, but her subsequent yelling still bounces off the walls and more than makes up for it. Tzuyu catches Dahyun’s gaze and lifts her hand in a silent thumbs-up. And when Momo raises her baton over her head as she cheers, flames blazing brightly from either end like the most triumphant of fireworks, Dahyun feels something extra warm curl inside her chest.

Later, when Mina pulls her in and leans close, Dahyun smiles into their kiss and thinks that maybe, everything has worked out after all.

-

Jihyo knows that the anti magic will probably be back.

After Mina and Dahyun’s dramatic but adorable reunion at the top of the arena stands the day before, Nayeon had confirmed that the light hadn’t been destroyed. But Mina couldn’t find anything saying when or how it would return. 

Then, just before the silence sobered them completely, Chaeyoung had said, “So what? We did it once, so we can do it again.” 

Jihyo scans the whiteboard at the front of the clubroom, the Sharpied plan Dahyun has yet to erase still front and center, framed by the countdown to the sixteenth that will soon become some distant past, and also maybe a near future. Jihyo supposes they’ll just have to live with that -- knowing that what makes them special can also be taken away just as easily. But there’s nothing to say that they can’t get it back again, like Momo did. 

So there’s some comfort, Jihyo thinks, in the permanence of Dahyun’s marker mix-up. Because Jihyo, for one, has never felt so complete as she did watching Momo light up the entire basketball court in a brilliant wall of fire, standing tall and steady in the face of everyone else’s gasps and cheers.

“Funny seeing you here.”

Jihyo looks up as Sana walks into the empty clubroom. The younger girl smiles. “Force of habit, I guess.”

Sana glances at the whiteboard behind her. “Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

Jihyo doesn’t really get it -- why Sana still comes over and slides onto the desk she’s sitting at. How this girl who can make the world see anything she wants to, still somehow sees something in Jihyo.

They’ve been dancing around each other for the past week, sure. Sana had spent plenty of time finding reasons to hover as close to Jihyo’s face as possible, drawing Jihyo in further and further until they were breathing each other’s air -- before doing something stupid like blowing a raspberry next to Jihyo’s ear or jabbing her in the side with a teasing finger.

Jihyo figures it’s how the two of them coped with the generally high stress levels the clubroom had been subject to until now. Because there’s something secure about Sana wrapping her illusion around their space like Tzuyu’s softest blanket, where they could forget about what the rest of the world sees and focus on what’s actually in front of them instead.

“So.” Jihyo leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “What do you guys usually do when you’re not fighting against gigantic balls of light?”

Sana’s perched on the desk so that Jihyo gets a perfect view of her side profile -- Jihyo’s gaze idly traces Sana’s jawline, and then quickly snaps back closer to Sana’s eye level. The older girl, meanwhile, leans back on one arm, crossing one leg over the other as she hums. “Bother each other mostly, I guess.”

Jihyo glances around the clubroom. It’s not like she and Sana haven’t been alone here before. But today, the room echoes. The emptiness morphs her desk into a tiny island, and something presses against her ribcage and deep into her stomach with an urgency she hasn’t felt before.

“Hey.” Sana leans in a little towards Jihyo. The height between the desk and chair prevents her from getting too close, but Jihyo feels the heat rise in her face anyway. Sana tilts her head, eyes shining softly. “Are you okay?”

Jihyo swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.” She tries for a smirk. “Is making people look up at you a habit of yours or something?”

“It could be.” Sana laughs, the glint in her eyes sharpening. And Jihyo can hear it already -- the start of something more sly already on the tip of the older girl’s tongue. But then Sana blinks and it’s gone as fast as she slips off of the desk. She walks over to the teacher’s desk instead and hoists herself on top; her legs swing idly as she pats the spot next to her. “Come here then.”

Jihyo gets up and heads over to join Sana. She braces her hands on the edge of the desktop before sliding backwards and onto it. Their shoulders bump once, twice, before she settles properly. “Okay,” she says, turning towards Sana. “What now -- ”

She really isn’t surprised that Sana’s already in her space -- any closer and Jihyo would have to go cross-eyed to focus properly on the other’s eyes. Sana’s giggle brushes against Jihyo’s cheek. “I don’t know, Jihyo-yah. You tell me.”

“Somehow,” Jihyo says quietly, “this seems familiar.”

Sana hums. “I can’t help it if you keep drawing me in.”

“If you make some stupid joke about me being attractive,” says Jihyo, “I’m going to push you off this desk.”

Sana pouts. “But it’s not a joke. It’s the truth. In more than one sense of the word.”

Jihyo chuckles. “Fine.” She wets her lips, and Sana’s gaze flickers down to her mouth for a moment. “So you’re not going to just blow into my ear this time, right?”

“If you don’t try to tickle me,” Sana promises. A lock of her hair falls forward, partially over her face. She wrinkles her nose. “Hurry up, before I have to fix my hair again.”

“I can help,” says Jihyo. She lifts a hand and brushes the strand back behind Sana’s shoulder. Which then lets her rest that same hand on Sana’s cheek afterwards, and lean in to close the remaining distance.

Sana laughs into the kiss, her own hand settling warmly just above Jihyo’s knee. And Jihyo, in a daze, thinks that this is the sort of thing that astronomers talk about: how the universe spins and swirls upwards and outwards, unfurling billions of stunning starbursts and untold planets as it extends light-years and millenia beyond comprehension. 

But here is the piece of space that Jihyo finds: sitting on a desk in an empty chemistry classroom with Sana’s mouth soft against hers, and something fonder than affection pushing through her veins. This is her universe, she decides, where Sana’s touch is the gravity she’ll surrender herself to over and over again, without a second thought.

Later that night, the two of them walk into Jihyo’s apartment hand in hand. Nayeon greets them from the armchair; Tzuyu is presumably somewhere underneath the swath of blankets Nayeon is currently wrapped in, but all Jihyo can really see is a forehead and some static-tousled hair. 

Nayeon doesn’t even blink at the way Sana drapes herself around Jihyo’s shoulders to give the younger girl a peck on the cheek. “Congratulations, you two. But can’t you go do your post-slow-burn celebration somewhere else? Tzuyu and I are watching that drama you hate.”

“Tzuyu hates it too,” Jihyo says as she plops onto the couch. Sana motions for her to scoot over a little more, so she does. Now there’s enough room for Sana to lie across the sofa, head comfortably settled in Jihyo’s lap.

“Gross,” says Nayeon. “Only Tzuyu should be that cute. And preferably with me.”

“We won’t say anything, unnie,” Sana assures her. “Mina has Dahyun over for their first official date, so I thought it would be rude to interrupt.” She turns her head to grin up at Jihyo. “If you two want alone time, though, Jihyo could always show me her room.”

“Even worse,” Nayeon declares. “Park Jihyo, don’t you _dare_ violate our roommate agreement.”

Jihyo rolls her eyes. “Just so you know, unnie, you two aren’t as quiet as you think you are.” There’s a distressed whine, slightly muffled, and then Tzuyu’s socked feet emerge from the blankets as she kicks her legs in protest. Jihyo clears her throat. “Sorry, Tzuyu. But why don’t you two go over to your place, then?”

Tzuyu finally pops up fully from behind Nayeon, her hair somehow falling perfectly in place, barring a few flyaway strands. “Jeongyeon-unnie and Momo-unnie are having a friend date night with Chaeyoung, and they said that no couples are allowed.”

“So what I’m hearing is that we need to break into Jeongyeon’s apartment in order to get some peace and quiet,” Nayeon says. “Great, let’s go.”

Jihyo sighs. “Just stay and watch your stupid drama, unnie.”

“Fine.” Nayeon snuggles back against Tzuyu once more. “You’re only allowed three complaints each per episode. Tzuyu gets five, because I definitely play favorites and you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Sana snickers, and Jihyo glances down. The older girl meets her gaze, and then winks before blowing her a kiss with one hand. Jihyo smiles, catching Sana’s hand and threading the fingers between her own.

The drama ends up being the most terrible thing Jihyo has seen on television in the last five years -- but she doesn’t even hit the complaint limit Nayeon has set. Because Sana has shifted from lying down to sitting while facing sideways, leaning against the back of the couch and watching Jihyo until she dozes off. 

And now with Sana’s legs laid over her lap, Sana’s head nestled softly in the crook of her neck, and Sana’s quiet snores filling her ears like a gentle heartbeat, Jihyo thinks that she could be floating among the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos if you actually made it to the end of this stupidly long fic :') if you find me on twitter @moonrise31 I'll thank you personally


End file.
